Caulbearer

In many cultures, a caul is considered talismanic; and a child born with it, possessing luck or protection. Luisa A. Igloria invokes this metaphor to weave poems exploring the veiled intervals of transition experienced by those in the diaspora— or by anyone who has felt a severing from their origins. The poems in Caulbearer enter spaces not only of nostalgia, loss, and impossible return. They also offer opportunities for glimpsing pleasure in the re-imagining and telling of our own stories, for as long and as many times as we need, in a world still full of beauty and mystery.

Originally from Baguio City, Luisa A. Igloria is the author of Maps for Migrants and Ghosts, The Buddha Wonders if She is Having a Mid-Life Crisis, and 12 other books. She is lead editor, along with co-editors Aileen Cassinetto and Jeremy S. Hoffman, of Dear Human at the Edge of Time: Poems on Climate Change in the United States. In 2015, she was the inaugural recipient of the Resurgence Poetry Prize, the world’ s first major award for ecopoetry, selected by a panel headed by former UK Poet Laureate Andrew Motion. She is a professor of English and Creative Writing at Old Dominion University.

Contents I Portrait of the Future as Reversal Lexicography Rituals for Remembering Archive After Leaving Portrait of the Heart as Rambutan Ailanthus The dogs of appetite Immigrant Ghazal Theory & Praxis Orbital When you sit down to write, is death ever sitting beside you? Elegy as Birth Poem for Stars Phenomenology of Endurance Salt Craving Poem with a Line from Lorca To Carry, as One Carries the Impossible Ten Lines Lyric with Nothing to Lose This is No Longer the Beginning Poem with Two Lines from Rilke Propensities of Water On Recomposition II Love is the Condition of Time You with Your Dark Hair Unfurled like a Banner Impossible, Ineffable Natural History of Hands Ambrosia Dear Architect, Natural History of the Mouth Flora of the Tropics Empire Cinema Enrique Remembers Melaka Before Disappearing from Known History Manifest Destiny: Infinite Loop Ex-Paradiso San Maló The Spratlys On the th Anniversary of Magellan’ s Philippines Landing Thief of Moons Caulbearer History as Catalogue of Phantasms I weep from a dream of the goddess Letter at the Threshold of Oblivion Blood Oath Laws of Attraction Sonnet with Double Reed Pipe Lost Time Given a Wing, What Would You Fashion Portrait of Demeter as Manananggal Magnificat III Catalogue of My Dead Natural History of My Love for Sour Things What World Landscape with Warnings & Moon Jelly Colony Prehistory of Language On the Navigation of Unstable Surfaces A Genealogy Landscape, Girdled Mostly by Hills Aubade with Rising Sea Levels In the Former Colony, Various Hauntings Of pleasure, One or the Other Memory as Paradoxical Dream Letter to Singing Drift The Oldest Light in the Universe Millions of Monarchs Make the Rarest Sound Natural History of the Mole in the Outer Corner of Your Left Eye Outrigger A Rapture